Keeping It Straight: Clinton's health and phony documents

A clean bill of health for Hillary Clinton has not stopped the right from posting fake medical records on the internet purporting to show she is suffering from seizures and dementia for their slavish followers to spread as if they are gospel.

Clinton’s physician — whose name appears at the top of the alleged “leaked” documents — released a statement calling the documents “false,” and reiterated her diagnosis that Clinton is “in excellent health and fit to serve as President of the United States.”

The fake records are making the rounds following the heavily edited trash circulated by FAKE News shouting head Sean Hannity, who played a tape of Clinton vigorously shaking her head in a manner he deemed “seizure-esque” (although neither of the medical experts on his program agreed).

The fake documents play off Clinton’s real concussion in December 2012 — which caused her to suffer double vision for nearly two months. But her longtime physician, Lisa Bardack, director of internal medicine, Mount Sinai Health System at CareMount Medical, says follow-up medical exams in 2013, “revealed complete resolution of the effects of the concussion.”

The fake documents, dated Feb. 5, 2014, which appear to have originated from a since-deleted Twitter account, purport to come from Dr. Bardack. But her title is wrong on the letterhead (right wing charlatans always screw up on the little things).

The letter purports to indicate that Clinton suffered complications from a 2012 concussion including “blacking out,” “uncontrollable twitching” and “memory loss.” It says Clinton had been diagnosed as having “Complex Partial Seizures” and “…early-onset Subcortical Vascular Dementia.” The images were shared and discussed on numerous websites, in social media and newspaper opinion columns. But again, I cannot stress this enough: the documents are fake.

The same Twitter account posted what was purported to be a magnetic resonance angiogram of Clinton’s brain showing a significant “abnormality” in the brain tissue. That is also a phony image.

In a statement, Dr. Bardack dismissed the authenticity of the documents, saying they are “false, were not written by me and are not based on any medical facts.”

Bardack, 16 Aug. - "As Secretary Clinton’s long time physician, I released a medical statement during the campaign indicating that she is in excellent health. I have recently been made aware of allegedly 'leaked' medical documents regarding Secretary Clinton with my name on them. These documents are false, were not written by me and are not based on any medical facts. To reiterate what I said in my previous statement, Secretary Clinton is in excellent health and fit to serve as President of the United States."

Despite the public release of Bardack’s medical evaluation, right wingers have questioned Clinton’s health and ability to serve as president. On FAKE News Sean Hannity, who has been caught using phony and highly edited videos repeatedly, speculated about serious health issues for Clinton while showing short clips of Clinton in the midst of a coughing fit in February, stumbling while boarding a plane in 2011, and shaking her head in June. Hannity, not a doctor, said the evidence looks seizure-esque to me.” The two actual doctors responded when asked in the following manner:

Dr. Fiona Gupta, neurologist, North Shore Brain and Spine Center: "You know, it’s just so hard to speculate based on snippets of the clips what is going on without having a full examination and workup."

Hannity: "Look at this video right here. Watch her reaction, because I’m not — it almost seems seizure-esque to me."

Gupta: "There are different types of seizures, local seizures that sometimes can cause just one body part, but it would be very rare. I mean, typically seizures will generalize, so I can’t say that’s a seizure."

Hannity: "Aren’t there many seizures like that, Dr. Siegel?"

Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News medical contributor: "I’m not a neurologist, and I don’t think that necessarily looks like a seizure …"

An opinion writer for Newsweek, who has epilepsy, wrote that Clinton’s movements looked “nothing like” a seizure. The writer called Hannity’s speculation degrading to people with epilepsy, and demanded an apology.

But Hannity isn’t the only one questioning Clinton’s physical fitness to be president. Donald Trump – who is obviously insane - said Clinton “lacks the mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS, and all of the many adversaries we face — not only in terrorism, but in trade and every other challenge we must confront to turn our great country around.”

As to Trump, what is missing is this important question – Why won’t you release your tax returns? What are you hiding?

As usual, only the truly stupid continue to fall for the trash spewed on the internet by the right-wing loon idiot fringe.